Bad History

Bad history is common, especially in a world that favors crowd sourcing over the views of experts. Even experts, however, are not infallible. Bad history grows from ignorance, laziness, lies, ideology. It has been a theme of Patriots and Peoples that ideology often cultivates error.

I wrote the comment below on a YouTube video three months ago. The video was put up by Political Juice, a popular channel with over 125 thousand subscribers. I have not watched other videos on this channel, but it is clear to me from this one that the creator is not a historian.

The video purports to present the history of the Second Amendment. It gets a few things correct, especially a small portion of Justice Scalia's argument in D.C. v. Heller (2008). It gets a whole lot wrong. I need to finish my review of Adam Winkler, Gun Fight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America (2011). That book presents a clear and accurate history of the Second Amendment that shows how extremists who are both pro- and anti-gun have been misguided in their understanding.

Patent Application for Puckle Gun (1718)

My comment (there are typos in the original that remain here):

The issues in this video start at the beginning. In the first eight minutes or so, PolJuice offers a short history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its changing relationship with England over half a century. About 80% of the facts are accurate (a couple of websites offer thin research), but the narrative itself is far from accurate in its interpretation. For instance, you mentions how the Puritans in the early years admitted people to church membership and full citizenship. However, this dramatically changed in 1662 with the Halfway Covenant (not mentioned in the video), due to internal pressures from growing secularization of the colony. Instead of seeking to understand the complexities of 1660s Massachusetts, the video blames all the conflicts on Charles II and James II. That's simply wrong. 

Then, the next eight to ten minutes race through a host of actions of Parliament from the 1660s to the 1770s with minimal context. Such facile generalizations are always grounded in shortcuts that distort. 

This video only becomes tolerable when PJ summarizes Justice Scalia's grammatical analysis of the Second Amendment in the Heller decision. This portion is well-done and accurate until he addresses the counter arguments in the dissenting opinions. There mockery reigns, even using a comic voice to undermine the credibility of the arguments. 

The final ten minutes or so is a mixed bag. The Puckle gun gets too much credit, as it does so often by people who don't delve into the history with any real effort. The Puckle gun was almost completely forgotten by the time Jefferson was born. Its deployment in any argument about the Second Amendment is anachronistic. It is also unnecessary. As the video points out, the First Amendment protects the sort of speech one finds on YouTube. Likewise, the Second Amendment has the flexibility to cover modern firearms. Using bad arguments to counter bad arguments does not strengthen your argument; it weakens it.